


Punch in the Gut

by NorroenDyrd



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Childhood Memories, Circle of Magi, F/M, Family Drama, Hurt No Comfort, Inquisitor Backstory, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Lost Love, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Not Canon Compliant, POV Inquisitor, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 19:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12777774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: A collection of distressed musings by Inquisitor Nadia Trevelyan, which reveal her backstory, paint her relationship with her late husband Maxwell, and hint that she is, in fact, the long-lost daughter of Cassandra and Regalyan, although neither she nor Cassandra have come to realize it yet.





	Punch in the Gut

'Punch in the gut' might be a clichéd, overused turn of phrase - if Nadia had a coin for every time she encountered it in all the books she's read, Varric's included, she would have been able to glaze all the walls of Skyhold with gold and still would have had a nifty heap of loot left over to buy that great mystery item from the merchant in Val Royeaux - but Maker's flea-bitten beard, does she find this expression easy to relate to! Almost chillingly so.  
  
Punch in the gut was exactly what she felt when her husband died.  
  
Husband... Should she even use that word? Did he even last long enough for 'husband' to carry any weight?  
  
It had not even been two weeks after the hasty, giddy, the-Circles-are-gone-now-and-we-can-do-whatever-we-want whirlwind of a bonding ceremony between two schoolmate sweethearts, officiated by a greasy-looking, heavy-eyed Chantry sister who smelled of mould and stale liquor and looked like she would have wedded a gourd to a pig if someone slipped a silver in her hand and shoved her to the pulpit. Not even two weeks - and then, Maxwell Trevelyan, the young husband of Nadia Trevelyan, née How In The Void Do I Know I Am A Chantry Orphan, fell to the sword of a wild-eyed, unshaven, panting goon in dented Templar armour.   
  
The bastard just burst without warning into the little cottage they were staying in, shaking the whole place from foundation to the rafters, frothing at the mouth and yammering something about 'hunting apostates'. And Maxwell got it into his stupid head that he just had to push the half-dressed Nadia behind his back, and to conjure up a fire ball. He just had to do something after he saw the blood dripping from the 'hunter's blade, and the limp arm of the pot-bellied little old man who had rented the cottage's back room to them, stretching across the floor behind that raving interloper's back. He just had to lunge himself at that blade, taking initiative in his own hands for once, fighting the goon to the last. He just had to play hero - and whisper ferociously, as he pinned himself on the Templar's sword, that the little old man, who lay like a piteous, discarded potato sack somewhere just beyond the doorway of their room, had not deserved this, and needed to be avenged.  
  
The poor old fellow had taken them in, as they were stumbling about, clueless and hung-over on their recent escape from the Circle, and increasingly more terrified of the explosions of magic that scorched the soil round every corner, as apostates clashed with rogue Templars.  
  
Nadia and Maxwell had wanted none of this. None of the fighting and flames and screams. They had wanted a tiny bit of freedom, and shelter from the war, and at least some pretense of having a honeymoon.   
  
And the cottage owner (what was his name even? Hubert? Hilbert? He talked with such a lisp that she cannot be sure) gave them just that. No questions asked, in a simple exchange for a little help around the garden and the chicken coop (and it had proved quite a bit of fun, too, because who knew that magic can be used not only as a lure for demons and a war tool for melting people's faces off, but also as this nifty household support for weeding carrot patches telekinetically and calming fretfully clucking hens).   
  
All that the little old man had done when they showed up was cast a long look at the staves behind their backs and at the road-worn rags that had once been their Chantry-issued robes, and then whisper knowingly that he once had a niece 'of the M-word perwww-shuasion', a 'luv-vely girl, luv-vely girl', and that she had to be on the run now too - so if he did not take Max and Nadia in, surely, the Maker would see that, and send his niece to the door of some house where she would be turned away and pushed out into the cold and rain, right?  
  
But instead, the Maker (if He even exists, because it sure doesn't seem like it sometimes, and the sizzling green scratch across Nadia's palm isn't proof of anything) decided to send a cut-throat with no room in his half-squashed brain for anything except 'Must. Kill. Apostates'. And before Hilbert - or Hubert - knew it, he was dead. And so was Maxwell.  
  
The Maxwell who had visited the orphanage where Nadia spent her first years, accompanying his parents on charity work - a prim little prince in an embroidered vest, and the subject of a sudden ridiculous crush for a tiny squirt with buck teeth and messy dark-brown hair.   
  
The Maxwell who had become Nadia's fellow apprentice, some years down the road, when his magic awoke and his family suddenly became not so charitable.   
  
The Max who had had smiled genially at his study mate's clumsy teasing ('Hey, look, Little Mister Velvet Pants is in the same Circle as us peasants'), which would suddenly make her tongue-tied with the realization that her crush had not gone anywhere.  
  
The Maxwell who had patiently endured every of Nadia's impatient outbursts during revision sessions, when the magic lore would not quite cram into her head and she felt like punching the stupid book covers.   
  
The Maxwell who had been the first, and only, apprentice to discover that the best way to shut Mouthy Nadia up was to give her a kiss.   
  
The Maxwell who had snogged her behind every bookcase in the Circle library, squeaking every time with fear of being discovered.  
  
The Maxwell who had blushed over the silly notes she would pass to him during every class, risking the wrath of a Templar (because any snatches of paper secretly exchanged by two mages have to be part of some evil demon-summoning ritual, right).  
  
The Maxwell who had had a tiny panic attack when she referred to the stain left on her bed sheets after he'd snuck into her dorm and, surrounded by muffling runes, took her virginity, as 'blood magic'.  
  
The Maxwell who had remained by her side, even as the Circles fell.  
  
The Maxwell who had wondered if this might mean a return to normal life for them, a life he would have had with his parents, had not his magic manifested - a life of raising a family.  
  
Her Maxwell.  
  
Dead.   
  
Because, angered by the needless death of old Hubert (Hilbert?) he had suddenly decided to be the brave one, the bold one, the punch-landing one. And because Nadia had not been quick enough to remind him that this was supposed to be her role in their relationship.   
  
She is not sure if she was truly ever in love with the poor doofus. Probably not. Probably, there is no such thing as love anyway. And they were never lovers, not in the high-strung, swoony sense of the word. Just two naïve kids who would play together, and then study together, and then sleep together, and then run from the Templars together.   
  
And then, in a flash of fire and steel, there were not two kids but one. Just one kid, standing over a twisted, sticky, lightning-fried black husk, which had apparently used to be the brainless armoured goon some moments before her palms began to burn with lightning - while the cottage of the late old Hilbert (Hubert) burned down around her.   
  
A stray spark from her and Max's spells must have hit a curtain or something; and if the little niece of the M-word persuasion was ever going to come for a visit, all she'd find would be a creaky charred carcass of a building over a carpet of ash.  
  
Nadia has always been physically strong, and has enjoyed exercising to harden her muscles, even though back at the Circle she had to do it in secret (it was not encouraged, to put it mildly, as brawny mages are the last thing a Templar wants to deal with). So, with a little strain of her arms and some telekinesis thrown in, she was able to pull both Max's and Hubert's (Hilbert's) bodies before the crackling, ember-caked roof beams came crashing down.  
  
And it was after she emerged from the acrid, dark smoke swirls, and took a look at Maxwell's damn pretty face, cold and white like a porcelain doll's in the frame of those ridiculous blonde curls he had, that the punch in the gut finally came.  
  
There is no better way to describe that sensation - that painful thrust that knocked all wind out of her and left her so numb and cold, that the colours of her surroundings seemed to grow blurry and desaturated. The remnants of that pain would keep stirring in the pit of her stomach for the longest time, as she held her dead husband's head in her lap, and the flaky cloak of falling ash kept layering over her hunched shoulders.  
  
The punch was more crushing, more powerful, than anything she had ever felt before - and honestly, she has not expected it to return, not after she's taken so many precautions to close herself off behind a wall of careless cynicism that's supposed to be impervious to touchy-feely stuff (take Bull, for instance: what they have is nothing but steam-venting between two consenting adults, right? Right?).   
  
And yet, it has come again. It has squashed her insides again. It has made her out of room to breathe again. And all over some trifle, too!  
  
Here's how it happened. With no warning - and no reason.   
  
They had just set up camp, and Bull had taken the first watch, while the three women of the team - herself, Cassandra, and Sera - all crammed inside their shared tent, to let Nadia treat the last of the scuffs and cuts that the little elven archer had covered herself with during their latest encounter with some lyrium smugglers or highwaymen or whoever those screaming beardos had been supposed to be.  
  
'Gaaah, friggg!' Sera spat, as Nadia's healing magic burned at the raw skin of her grazed forearm.  'Hurts worse than giving birth!'  
  
'You would not know how giving birth feels,' Cassandra reprimanded her sternly, handing Nadia a clean bandage.  
  
'Prrbt,' Sera rolled up her eyes. 'S just an expression, yeah? Not like you would know either!'  
  
A sudden pause followed, during which Cassandra grew progressively tenser and Sera's eyes grew progressively rounder. When they reached the ultimate degree of popping out of their sockets, the elf  exhaled with a tremendous noise, and howled,  
  
'Whaaaa? Nooo way! You had a kid?! You actually walked around, big and all, and then popped out a mini-Cass? How come nobody knows anything?! How come the kid's not here, watching old ma kick arse? How...'  
  
'The child died,' Cassandra cut her off, her voice quiet yet slashing through the air in the tent like the strike of a blade. 'I did not even get to see them. Not that it matters. That was many years ago - and I would rather we did not talk about this. Not now. Not at any other time. Not at all'.  
  
The child died.  
  
These short, brisk words have somehow had the same effect on Nadia as stroking the icy skin of her silly, hapless Maxwell. So now she has to lie curled up in her corner of the tent, having excused herself with feeling tired all of a sudden, and praying, she does not even know to whom, that the other two won't notice her strained breathing and the sudden redness of her eyes. If they do, she'll have to fling herself from somewhere in shame.  
  
Because like she said - this is a trifle. This is not a valid reason to be so overwhelmed by pain. It's startling, of course, for such a detail of Cassandra's past to randomly come into light; and it's sad, too, that the baby didn't live... But at the end of the day, it's none of Nadia's business, and she shouldn't be taking it so personally.  
  
So what if when she was a skinny, scabby-kneed Chantry ward, named Nadia by one of the Sisters as a cruel joke - she believes that it's the Antivan word for 'nobody' - she would sometimes stay awake well into the small hours of the morning, plastered over her narrow, stuffy-smelling bunk and watching the shadows on the ceiling and imagining that it was her own little self, fighting dragons and demons and other monsters with a brave and beautiful grown-up, the mother that she never knew.   
  
So what if it hurt less to pretend that her mother had to give her up not because she did not want her like the Sisters kept saying (that had even been their final parting message as they sent Nadia to the Circle), but because she must have been needed on some super-amazing heroic quest, from which she would return one day, when Nadia was old enough, and, after a little break for them to get to know each other, take her away with her, as her faithful squire and apprentice, and smile with pride when Nadia killed her first foul beastie.  
  
So what if these sappy fantasies might have been part of the reason why, already as a Circle mage, Nadia revelled in her clandestine physical training sessions so much - even though by then, she would tell herself she'd stopped believing that she ought to hone her body into that of a mighty warrior to impress some fairy-tale character she imagined her mother to be.  
  
And so what if it all stirred inside of her again, when Cassandra was dragging her towards the Breach - a clueless prisoner who had only wanted to come to the Conclave to maybe, just maybe, make the tiniest contribution to ending the war, so that no-one else would have to die like Maxwell had.  
  
So what if, during their hasty trek across the surface of an enormous frozen lake, with the sky coughing out green fire all around them, Nadia chanced to glance at their reflections in the ice, side by side - and was struck by how similar the outlines of her mouth and cheekbones looked to the grouchy Chantry warrior's.   
  
So what if, some minutes ago, when Cassandra had only just revealed that she'd had a child, her silly little heart soared for a moment, with an impossible hope.  
  
So what.  
  
So bloody what.  
  
None of this was ever supposed to be serious. She is not a starry-eyed child any longer; she never fully bought into this wild idea that she might be Cassandra's long-lost daughter. She may have... messed around with it, just for fun - like she messes around with the idea that Bull might mean more to her than a throwaway bedmate (and wallmate, and shrubmate, and wartablemate). But she never actually believed it, not for a second. It shouldn't matter that much; it shouldn't hurt that much.  
  
Then why does it?   
  
Why has it been such a punch in the gut?


End file.
